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Visual Pinball: Build Your Own Pinball Machine Interview with Visual Pinball?s co-developer Randy Davis
DGD: I?m not sure what the legal ramifications are when it comes to playing the old pinball machines like KISS, Xenon, Baby Pac-Man and others. Isn?t emulating those games considered illegal like MAME?

RD: Visual Pinball itself does not emulate nor does it aid emulation in any way. You are most likely thinking of VPinMame, which is an ActiveX control that emulates pinball ROMs. Since VPinMame can be scripted against, it can be created in a Visual Pinball table script and used to run all the pinball parts. I actually had no hand in that project except for a little consulting about ActiveX when it started. The people who did it were very good though; they had it working a lot faster than I thought they would.
As for my opinions the legal matters of those who do emulate the ROMs, I think it?s still way below the radar of anybody who might care. If the VP becomes versatile enough to start physically emulating the machines special gizmos with great accuracy, it might upset anybody wanting to license the game design to another software company, but I don?t think we?re there yet.

DGD: Have any pinball manufactures contacted you about the use of your product?

RD: No they have not. Several people have called regarding publishing offers, but I think if VP became any more work than a hobby, I would probably explode.

DGD: Is there anything you would like to say to all of the Visual Pinball table fans and aspiring game developers?

RD: I would like to sincerely thank everybody who has helped out on the project. There have been so many individuals who run the forum site, make tables that inspire others, answer peoples questions because I never have time, report bugs, just so much stuff that really makes the community more than just an application.

A special thanks to Randy Davis for taking time out of his extremely busy schedule to answer our questions. Visual Pinball is an incredible application that will provide an intuitive interface for beginning game developers and instant results so one can test their own pinball machine right away. The best part about Visual Pinball is that it is a FREE download so there?s no excuse to at least give it a try.



About Visual Pinball
You can learn more about Visual Pinball by visiting the official website at http://www.visualpinball.com. To find other Visual Pinball enthusiasts, the tables they are working on or just general information about Visual Pinball, you can visit the VP Forums at http://www.vpforums.com. There are many original pinball tables available at http://www.irpinball.com where you can download, test and see how a Visual Pinball table is created.

Don Lee is the Senior Technical Producer at Digital Media Online. He manages the Digital Game Developer, SIGGRAPH News websites and you can find him answering questions at DMN Forums. He can be located on the internet at http://www.digitalmedianet.com.

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